Jon Speelman's Agony Column #42

2/28/2017 – This week's Agony (and a soupcon of lukewarm Ecstasy) is all mine, after two rather challenging weekends at the 4NCL in Northampton and then the Bunratty Open. The latter was my first weekend tournament since I played there over a decade ago, and quite a shock to the system given the old-fashioned schedule of a game on Friday evening, three on Saturday and two on Sunday.

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Jon Speelman's Agony Column #42

In the old days, the 4NCL used almost invariably to boil down to a last round battle between my team Wood Green and Guildford. Since we downsized a couple of years ago, Guildford have had it almost all their own way, and when we – now a middling team with me on top board – met them on Saturday February 18th they slaughtered us 7-1.

Bunratty was my first weekend tournament since I played there over a decade ago, and quite a shock to the system given the old-fashioned schedule of a game on Friday evening, three on Saturday and two on Sunday. Nigel Short won with a superb 6.0/6 and was followed by Alex Lopez and Richard Bates on 5.0 – the latter courtesy of a very interesting last round win against me.

I'm briefly going to show the soupcon of Ecstasy, a very pretty combination which I made the mistake of avoiding when my opponent hadn't actually spotted it; and that last round game.

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See also

9/17/2017 – This week's games are by Andreas Niedersberger, pictured playing chess against his very beautiful cat, which apparently has a predilection for the Rubinstein French. Andreas gave up chess — a childhood hobby — at age fourteen, and only when his own children had grown up a bit did he return to the game. His two games feature a Tarrasch (or Semi-Tarrasch) and an open Sicilian.

See also

9/3/2017 – Rudy van Kemenade featured in Agony #1 sixteen months ago and this week becomes our first repeat. After a veritable tsunami of submissions when this column first appeared the water level has now fallen, so that our Grandmaster Agony columnist's lead time is quite short. Please send in your games if you'd like them to appear, and you are more than welcome to send games even if you've already done so before. | Photo: Dyfed Chess Association Publicity Gallery

Video

The setup for White recommended by Valeri Lilov is solid and easy to play – the thematic moves are almost always the same ones: Nge2, 0-0, Bg5 (or Be3), Nd5, Qd2. Later, according to Black’s setup, things continue with f4 or even Rac1, b4 and play on the queenside. Starting with the classic Botvinnik-Spassky, Leiden 1970, the author describes this universally employable setup in 7 videos (+ intro and conclusion).